Black vote vaulted "first" JFK

With Pres. George W. Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry both after the African-American vote, a recently unearthed recording reveals how Martin Luther King, Jr., regarded blacks' influence in an earlier presidential contest. According to a transcript by the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford (Calif.) University, King maintained that black voters were key to propelling Sen. John F. Kennedy to the White House in 1960.

"It is pretty conclusive now that the Negro played a decisive role in electing the president of the United States, and maybe for the first time we can see the power of the ballot and what the ballot can do," King said in a speech delivered Dec. 30, 1960, in Chattanooga, Tenn. "Now we must remind Mr. Kennedy that we helped him to get in the White House. We must remind Mr. Kennedy that we are expecting to use the whole weight of his office to remove the ugly weight of segregation from the shoulders of our nation."

Even before the discovery of this speech, many scholars asserted that Kennedy's intervention on behalf of an incarcerated King helped to attract support from the black electorate. On Oct. 19, 1960, King and 35 others were arrested during a sit-in at Rich's department store in Atlanta. Because the arrest violated the terms of an earlier probation King had received as a result of a traffic citation, Judge J. Oscar Mitchell sentenced him to four months of hard labor in Georgia State Prison at Reidsville.

Kennedy telephoned King's wife, Coretta Scott King, to express his concern about the imprisonment. Meanwhile, Kennedy's campaign manager and brother, Robert F. Kennedy, contacted the judge to inquire about King's right to bail. The next day, King was released on $2,000 bond. In an interview after his release, King acknowledged that he was deeply indebted to John Kennedy but maintained his nonpartisanship.

However, the recently found recording of King's speech, which is titled "The Negro and the American Dream," provides solid evidence that King believed black voters played a significant role in electing Kennedy. "The recording adds to our understanding of King's evolving relationship with Kennedy," says Stanford historian Clayborne Carson, director of the King Papers Project.

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